I recently purchased a Harman MAGNUM STOKER COAL STOVE to heat the basement in my new house and to help with the heating on the first floor. My square footage in the basement is 1354, but for some reason I can not get the temperature higher than 63 degrees. When the temperature dial is at 6 and the feed rate adjuster is at four or three, I have burning coals all the way to the edge of the burn pot without no ash line. In about 4 hours the ash pan will be three quarters full without a lot of the coal still shiny and black, and the temperature will not rise. I was also burning a lot of coal in that short of a time, about a 40 lb. at the above settings. Should I be burning that much? Right now I have the temperature dial at 4 and the feed adjuster at 1 so I am not burning as much as I previously was. Now I am burning 80 lb. of coal in a day. The temperature is now 60 degrees and there is a little ash line that hangs over burn pot before dropping in the ash pan. I was wondering how should my basement be getting and how much coal should I be burning? Also shouldn't I be getting and ash line before the coal gets to the end of the burn pot? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Welcome to the forum.....You should be getting much higher temps in the basement than you are experiencing unless you have a wind tunnel from the outside down there!

A few questions to see if we can help narrow down the cause.

The controls on my mag stoker don't correspond with your 'settings' that you mention so I am not sure what they mean. I have timers on my control box that control the length of the idle fire burn time, the time between when the idle fire burn happens and how long the convection fan runs between burns. The coal feed on mine is measured in 'dots' that the pusher block moves as shown by a small gauge on the stoker housing. I am currently 'pushing' about 2.5 dots. My timer settings: idle fire runs for 4 minutes, then is off for 11 minutes and my convection timer is set for 13 minutes so it runs all the time. I burn about 45 lbs overnight (12 hrs) in this colder weather.

Some reasons you may not be getting the heat....Your combustion fan flap is closed too far. There is a baffle that adjusts to cover the intake on that fan. Mine is open about the width of my index finger. If it is open too far then you run the risk of pushing exhaust out of the stove from the hopper...not a good thing! Make sure you have a CO detector.

The holes on your grates are clogged. did you clean them out with a drill bit so combustion air flows freely through them. The fines have clogged the area under the grates. There is a cleanout lever on the left side, under the grate assembly. swing this back and forth with a poker to allow ash to drop from there.

Your draft may be too strong pulling all the heat from the stove up the chimney. Do you have a manometer to measure what your draft is? Do you have a barometric damper?

How high is the flame coming off the coal bed when it is running after a few minutes? It should be almost to the top of the firebox.

This is a start.....given this info there will be some other questions that come up.....

Yes, everything that titlest1 said. Plus you haven't filled out your profile as far as your location is concerned. Sixty-three degrees in your basement mught be pretty darn good if you are at the arctic circle. That stove is a heat machine. When setup correctly it will put out an amazing amount of heat. You've got some fine tuning to do. It's not like a wood stove where you just hook it up to a chimney and fire away. Coal stoker stoves require a little more precision in the draft. It sounds like you are sending most of your heat up the stack. The good news is you came to the right place. Hang in there and answer the questions of the experts here and you'll be running around your house in your underwear in no time flat.

Above is a diagram of the Circuit board on my stove. My house is in upstate NY below Binghamton, so it should be throwing some heat out. The company that installed the stove last week is coming to service it tomorrow, so I was gathering some information so I can ask them questions to help remedy the problem. I Do you have a barometric damper, but not sure if it should be open to let more air in or closed. I am still wondering why I do not get an ash line when the feeder rate dial is above 1? With the settings on the stove now, the flames are not very high. But when the dial is at 6 and the feed rate adjuster is at four or three the flames do hit the top of the fire bed. I get burning coals all the way to the edge of the burn pot without no ash line, and in about 4 hours the ash pan will be three quarters full without a lot of the coal still shiny and black, and the temperature will not rise. I was also burning a lot of coal in that short of a time, about a 40 lb. at the above settings. Is that normal?

Ok....I see you have one of them new fangled Super-Mag's with a super-duper confusilator on it!! Do you have a power vent or a regular chimney?

And since it is new we can assume the grate holes are clear and that you don't have a build up of ash under the grates.

I am not familiar with how the new controller works and the manual is sparse. From your description of the coal in your ash pan it seems that you are not getting a complete burn. Did you check the restrictor baffle on the combustion fan to make sure it is open enough (part #9 on page 33)?

Is your draft as recommended, .06 - .08 in the flue pipe and .03 - .04 in the firebox? .08 seems a bit on the high side to me, I run my flue pipe draft at .04. The high draft may have some of your heat heading out the flue. You say you have a new house, it may be very tight as far as air infiltration. do you see any difference in stove performance if you crack a window or provide some other means of outside air?

edit to add I may have misread your ash pan description...are you saying there is or isn't unburned coal in the ash pan??

A regular chimney was installed with the stove, and I am not sure about the draft. I guess I will need to invest in a manometer so I can check the draft annually. I also need to check the restrictor baffle either tonight or tomorrow, and there is a lot of unburned coal in the ash pan when set at a higher feeder rate. Lately I have been running the stove in stove temp because I have better control of regulating the burn until I get it burning completely.

Actually the controls are very similar to the DVC. I currently have stove temp on H and the rate on 2. If I increase the rate to 3 or 4 I seem to get a lot of unburned coal in the ash pan. Either way the temperature in the basement doesn't fluctuate.

My Harman is an older Magnum not the Super Magnum. I have a thermostat on the first floor and the stove in the basement. It never gets warm enough to trip the thermostat, as I read the manual, the thermostat over rides the timer settings, so it runs full out all the time?

Yes it runs full out all the time. How warm is it down in your basement? The attach picture is a burn with the feed rate at 2 and the temp dial at 4. I am not sure if it is the correct burn, as you can see I do not have the 1 inch to 1 1/2 inch burn.

i agree with Rob, that is a very small fire if it is calling for heat, looks like more combustion air is needed. how far open is the baffle plate on the combustion blower?

it would be best if you have a manometer in place so that you can adjust that plate but not open it too far and pressurize the firebox. as mentioned in the manual you want to keep the manometer reading lower in the firebox than the manometer reading in the flue pipe before the barometric damper.

here is a pic I found of the stoker int he workshop at full burn. you can see how high the flame is, it reaches almost to the top of the firebox.

Yes, lazy fire from lack of air. You've got live coal dropping into the ash pan too. Fix the combustion air and draft problem first and that may allow the coal to fully burn before it reaches the end of the grate. If not you will also need to adjust your feed rate back some.